Peru: How Ed Sheeran helped Fireboy DML’s hit go global

The remix with Ed Sheeran landed late last year, but Peru had already become Fireboy’s biggest streaming hit to date and spent four weeks at the top of the Official Afrobeats Chart.

Anyone looking for any hidden or deep meaning in the track will be disappointed. As the song lyrics tell us, Fireboy performed it spontaneously after arriving off a flight from Miami.

He says he didn’t overthink the song and recorded it as an off-the-cuff freestyle during an unplanned studio session last July.

“I knew I had a very beautiful, catchy song and when you’ve got a catchy hook in Afrobeats, you literally have a hit already .

Just before Christmas, Fireboy met Ed Sheeran face to face for the first time to record the video in New York.

“It was a great atmosphere,” he says. “I’ve listened to him for more than a decade and he’s the person who made me love the acoustic guitar.”

Fireboy has been making music since he was a child but the “spark” only ignited when he was in his second year at university.

“From that point on I was blind to everything else, including school and relationships. Music gives you a blind devotion and an obsession.”

With the success of Peru, Fireboy says he doesn’t want to have “too many lofty dreams and aspirations.”

“That’s how you set yourself up for undue pressure.”

But 2022 already looks like a busy year with US and UK tours, a third album and festival appearances, which he’s hinted may involve his new mate Ed.

“Stay tuned. We want to give the fans some special memories this year.”